


Meadowlarks Fly Down

by Sylvesterelle



Series: Float Until You Learn to Swim [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Artist Derek Hale, M/M, Mates, Post-Canon Fix-It, Spark Stiles Stilinski, Stilinski Family Feels, Werewolf Bonds, everyone is just really happy and where they belong okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-13 15:35:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18471868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylvesterelle/pseuds/Sylvesterelle
Summary: After all is said and done, there is this: the feeling of Derek’s hand in Stiles’ own, the sound of his dad’s laugh, carefree in a way it hasn’t been in years, and the way Stiles finally feels settled in his body, at home and at peace.





	Meadowlarks Fly Down

It happened as it was supposed to happen.

Just as Derek’s life had opened to carry Stiles’ in parallel, Stiles’ did the same. They had returned to Beacon Hills that first summer, the June air honeysuckle sweet and saturated in greens and blues in the way only California can be. 

There was trepidation, of course there was; but they both felt something had changed.

Some change in the wind or quality of the land, a waking up of the dirt and trees that felt warm and welcoming, vibrating on the familiar wavelength the two felt in the threads wrapped around their hearts.

It was a land that recognized them but didn’t necessarily need them anymore; it could thrive on its own, now.

The same was true of the people. There was less darkness in them, maybe—or maybe just in Stiles and Derek, and their perception of the town.

The Sheriff’s job had been quieter than it had in years, whatever tectonic force that had flooded the town with pain finally settled.

It made Stiles wonder how much of it was prolonged by their own misery, a closed loop of suffering and guilt that they were all too scared to leave, unsure they deserved anything else.

But slowly, like leaves unfurling in the sun, the once-warriors of Beacon Hills settled into something happier, more open.

Stiles’ dad, with his son’s blessing, sold the house they had lived in since Stiles was a child. The house that had memories of their mother, yes, but also too many lifetimes of pain; they didn’t need it anymore.

Instead, the Sheriff moved to a small farmhouse just outside of town, a place with a wide, wooden porch and room for a garden full of vegetables Derek helped him plant, with strict instructions from Stiles to actually _eat_ them.

Melissa was there more often than not, jeans dusted with flour and the smell of fresh bread humming from the kitchen.

Parrish came over every weekend for Sunday dinner and even Chris and Isaac could occasionally be found there, recently returned from France. Chris had become the department’s newest consultant, spending evenings discussing cases with Stiles’ dad over a cold beer on the porch. Isaac, on the other hand, had decided he wanted to open a bakery in town, full of everything he’d learned in his travels and what Melissa shared from Scott’s abuela, taught with endless patience in the Stilinski kitchen.

The walls sang with pictures of their family—old and new—and it filled Stiles with a warmth he could barely describe, knowing his father and his friends had knit themselves together into a new whole, strange and wonderful as it is.

Even the thing Stiles was most anxious about had passed like so many worries before it.

The Sheriff, always adept at reading people, had taken one look at Derek and seen the change in the young man’s shoulders, the softening of the lines around his eyes, and felt the reassurance in his grip. Most importantly, he’d seen tenderness in his son’s eyes, and the ineffable care with which Derek touched him.

A lot had happened since the Sheriff had first met Derek Hale, and he couldn’t bring himself to hold the ravages of time and circumstance against him.

That first night he'd returned to Beacon Hills, Stiles and the Sheriff had sat on the front porch of their old house, reveling in the cracks in the wood and the tear in the screen, letting in the most determined of mosquitos.

His dad had been quiet, perhaps not more so than normal, but there was something different to this silence, something contemplative. But in the end, he’d only asked Stiles one question.

“Are you happy, son?” he’d asked, rocking gently in his chair and staring out past the lawn.

Nothing else, no questions into Derek’s morals or background or sordid past. Just…was he happy?

The only answer Stiles could give was the truth: yes. Undeniably, unashamedly, and almost unbearably yes.

Derek had taken the mass of emotion and pain and loneliness and apprehension Stiles had once felt and turned it into something beautiful, as he had done with his own.

In many ways, the Sheriff’s question was a formality. He knew his son well enough to read the signs, hear the change in his voice over the months he was away at college. Wasn’t naïve enough to think it was just a settling into place—there was something actively guiding Stiles, bringing him him into a peace he hadn’t seen in his son in so long.

Too long, if he was being honest, and he could only feel regret that he wasn’t able to help him further along the way.

But the time for that has passed, the regret and the shame. They’d learned well enough that nothing new can grow if you keep burning it down, and the Sheriff was tired of flames.

So he welcomed Derek into the family, the one that was never meant to be just two, and the rest of the pack followed. His house was the beating heart of it now—not a train station or a loft with broken walls, but a place with a little bit of each of them in it, a place that seemed always to be full.  

After all is said and done, there is this: the feeling of Derek’s hand in Stiles’ own; the sound of his dad’s laugh, carefree in a way it hasn’t been in years; and the way Stiles finally feels settled in his body, at home and at peace, mind quieter each day.

There is so much in this world that is cold and hard, so much that had tried to tell Stiles that he isn't enough, wherever he's at. That he’d never be enough, that he’d have to rise to meet the world, not the other way around. But Derek is the opposite; he meets Stiles where he stands and doesn't flinch when he slips into something else, something darker, some remnant of the past that built him and the pain he’d never quite be able to escape, even as he grows with it.

But that was then and this is now and, at the end of it all, Stiles has this: a warm body beside him and a soft voice, ever calling him home.

**Author's Note:**

> So…two years have passed since the last installment of this, and my dudes, I couldn't tell you why I decided to write this now. At some point I’ll go back and edit the first two parts, because they’re a hell of a lot more histrionic than I remember but, in the meantime, enjoy some incredibly low stakes epilogue in the name of all that is Found Family. 
> 
> There is a part two in the works, with Derek and Stiles returning to his mother’s cabin together. If you have anything you're desperate to see in an epilogue/further installments, let me know below!


End file.
